Marxism Basics
Marxism Basics
The Who, What, Where, When, and Why of Marxism
Beginnings
In the beginning was the Class Struggle. Well, according to Marxists, it was there all along—but it took Karl Marx to point it out to everyone. You've probably heard of the Communist Manifesto of...
Big Players
Karl MarxSo, let's get one thing straight: Karl didn't actually write literary theory himself. Have you seen the size of the books he wrote? He didn't have to just sit down writing about novels. Ne...
Key Debates
If there's anything Marxists hate more than Ronald Reagan, it's other Marxists. Marxism is notorious for in fighting. Okay, these are professors we're talking about, so the body count is pretty low...
State of the Theory
When the Soviet Union—the world's first Marxist state—fell in 1991, Marxism was deader than disco. But when the world economy hit the fan in 2008, Marxism as a political program came back from...
Talking the Talk
What is literature? Man or woman on the street: "Literature—it's books, right? Stories and poems and plays? Maybe good stories and poems and plays?"For Marxists, this is only the beginning of the...